~ge 16 RAIN Dec 1975 The Map Is Not The The very meaning of "survival" becomes different when we stop talking about the survival of something bounded by the skin and start to think of the survival of the system ofideas in circuit. The contents pf the skin are randomized at death and the pathways within the·skin are randomized. But the ideas, under further transformation, may go on out in the world in Hooks or works of art. Socrates as a bio-energetic individual is dead. But much ofhim still lives a component in the con temporary ecology of ideas. Gregory Bateson .r.a Earth (sign not v. ery w:11 drawn - 1:ft lo~er str~ke should be ..,__... at bottom)+ the.foregoing= level plam, wide horizon. • Every so often when the sun shines around here I'm aware, each time with some amazement, how.thick the air is with curlicues and specks,---pieces of our fairly orderly world falling ·apart, drifting about. . . And so, too, every so often-sometimes for periods of •months- my attention is drawn to the language between me and myself, me and others in the world. Does the the world change first and pull language after it, or doe,s,,a new ~wareness of language suddenly rpake us see 'the world differently. Historically, in the West, language became an overt object of atte~tion to philosophers around the turn of the century. . ···-There was a turning away from the Romantic philosophical 'tradition (represented by Henri Bergson, Friedrich Nietzsche and others). The new analytic philosophy, with centers of gravity in England and Vienna, struck out for a more "down to earth," approachable goal. Philosophers like Bertrand Russell, A. N. Whitehead, A. J. Ayer, G. E. Moore, herded philosophy toward analysis of philosophical language. By far one of the most complicated and interesting paths was taken by Ludwig Wittgenstein. His books, mostly trans- . cripts of lecture notes, are often painfully-and sometimes unin ten tionall y humorous! y-complicated. "Now there is no objection to calling a particular sensa.tion 'the ·expectation that B will come.' There may even be good practical reasons for using such an expression. Only mark: i.f we have explained the meaning of the phrase 'expecting that B will come' in this way, no phrase which is derived from this by substituting a different name for B is thereby explained ..." _ At first glance, one of Wittgenstein's underlying themes, "The limits of i:ny language are the limits of my world," •sounds like a blatant mental steady state. But, Qn the other hand (that's one of those expressions?), it is a place to begin; until'we know something about it and at least spot the bloomin' borderline between ourselves, the .metaphysics implicit in our language and_use and the real(?) world, we are perhaps stalking termites with pick-up trucks. Greatly influenced by the analytic philosophy tradition and occun:jng al.most simultaneously, the science of general semantics begins to grow. In 19 33 Alfred Korzybski published Science a~d Sanity, which was eventually to bring to life a perspective on.social/ , psychological life referred to as general semantics. Like the analytic•philosophers, Korzybski was influenced by the swelling awareness of applications of the scientific methodit appeared to be the only way to get real results. He attempted to outline a study of man·'through seeking descriptions and formulas that would point to the relation between language in brain and language in mind. Korzybski saw the possibilities that are only becoming technically fe-asible of scientific analysis of language on the surface, as it falls from tongues in relation to the accompanying neurological occurences. Very often since, the twenties' semantics has come to· mean something more like the study of the ambiguity of language-often as applied in the political sphere-a worthwhile study in its own right, but not nearly as holistic as • Korzybski was describing: "A process accompanying our words which one might call 't}:ie proce~s of meaning them' is the modulation of the voice in,which w.e speak the words; or one of the processes similar to tliis, like the play of facial expressions." One of the major influences in the study of language has been the in-depth studies of families of languages. We have always learned a great deal by comparing one language to another; but it's only been recently that elaborate comparisons have been made between languages with little or no direct contact with one another. It is then the culture shock sets in, and language appears like a metaphysical structure that is indeed the limits of our world. • Every language and every well-knit technical sublanguage incorpora,tes certain points of view and certain patterned resistances to widely divergent points of view. This is especially . so ifthe language is not surveyed as a plenetary phenomenon, but is as usual taken for granted, and the local parochial species of it is used by the individual thinker and is taken to be its fun sum. Benjamin Whorf ~ Sun above line of horizon=dawn. It was found that the background linguistic system (in other words, the grammar) of each language is not merely a reproducing instrument for voicing ideas but rather itself the shape ofideas, the program and guide for the individual's mental activity, for his analysis of impressions, for his synthesis, of his mental stock in trade. Benjam'in Whorf What this brings to general semantics and analytic philosophy is a wider perspective, for the laws of correct, cle~r, meaningful maps of the territories are dependent not on simplifying all languages to one that "makes sense" but to create an everincreasing synthesis of cultural points of view. One who binds three planes : heaven, earth and man= ruler, to rule. • The Hopi Indian language is better adapted than our own to the exact sciences. _It contains words representing not verbs or nouns, but events, and is thus more applicable to the space- ·time continuum in which we now know that we are living. Furthermore, the "event-word" has three moods: certitude, probability, imagination. Instead ofsaying: a_man crossed the river in a boat, the Hopi·would employ the group: man-riverboat in three different combinations, according to w.hether the event was observed by the narrator, reported by a third party, ord~am~ • From Morning of the ~agician
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